Cuyahoga County voting, vote-counting likely to be slow

CLEVELAND -- Planning to dash in Election Day and vote? Don't count on it. It will take anywhere from 18 to 23 minutes for the average Cuyahoga County voter to fill out a ballot.

Slow-moving lines, an expected record turnout and scanners that may prompt some voters to revisit their ballot could clog the polls, even causing some voting locations to stay open well past the normal closing time. Anybody in line at 7:30 p.m. must be allowed to vote.

So, when can you expect final results from the county? Election officials won't predict. Director Jane Platten said it could be around 12:45 a.m., the time final numbers were available for the Oct. 14 special primary in the 11th Congressional District. But only 16,287 people voted that day. An expected 750,000 people will vote for president.

Platten has been around elections long enough to know that all sorts of things can go wrong, any of which can prolong the count for hours.

Last-minute lawsuits to keep voting places open are possible. New ballot scanners that will record votes in Cuyahoga haven't been used in a countywide election yet, although they worked fairly well two weeks ago. Weather can turn in a minute, like it did in the March primary when an ice storm delayed arrival of ballots downtown for counting. Voting machine memory cards can be misplaced.

"We want to be timely, but we're not going to be timely and sacrifice accuracy," said Board Chairman Jeff Hastings.

Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner, who has administrative oversight of the board, supports Cuyahoga's position that timely results are a low priority.

Cuyahoga's ballot is two pages, four-sided. Six wordy state issues complicate the choices. Platten said people unfamiliar with the issues will take awhile to read ballot language -- hence the 18-to-23 minute per person to vote.

Cuyahoga Commissioner Tim Hagan, a veteran politician, voted early at the Board of Elections. He said it took him 10 minutes to complete the ballot.

The board will try to move voters along. People will not be restricted to voting in booths. Extra tables and clipboards will be in each location. You can even fill out your ballot in a corner of the room.

To counter unforeseen problems, the board has employed a strategy to encourage early voting.

The plan seems to be working. The board has received more than 246,000 early-voter applications. More than 97,000 people have already voted, including 18,500 people who cast ballots at the board. Cuyahoga's goal is 300,000 early voters.

Early voting has been strong among suburbanites. More than 25 percent of registered voters in many suburbs have requested absentee ballots, including 26 percent in Parma and 31 percent in Rocky River. "That is going to be a significant help," Platten said.

Voters interested in avoiding lines at the polls still have time to visit the board's downtown headquarters to cast an absentee ballot or to request a ballot by mail.

People determined to visit the polls can print a sample ballot specific to their precinct to study before heading out on Election Day. Sample ballots are available at the board's Web site, boe.cuyahogacounty.us.

Election officials believe that lots of early voters will make their job easier. Polling places will be less crowded, and workers will have to account for fewer ballots.

The county's switch to paper ballots this year put elections officials at ease. They were tired of constant headaches with touch-screen machines. But the change means poll workers must hand-count every ballot cast at their polling place, and compare them to the number of signatures in poll books.

The process is meant to ensure there aren't a bunch of missing ballots after the polls close. But the layer of security will slow delivery of memory cards and ballots to the board's warehouse on Cleveland's East Side, where votes are tallied.

Each of the county's 1,436 precincts will have a scanner that alerts voters if their ballot has any races with more than one vote or several races that were not voted. This step could cause bottlenecks all around the county as voters wait to scan their ballots and some return to a booth to make a change.

There is only one scanner per precinct.

While Cuyahoga is usually one of the last counties in the state to report results, other areas of Ohio might lag along, as well.

Counties that still use touch-screen machines must make paper ballots available to voters who request them. A spokesman for the Franklin County Board of Elections said there's no way to predict how many voters will want paper ballots. Franklin's paper results won't be counted until 3 a.m., spokesman Ben Piscitelli said.

Follow Us

cleveland.com is powered by Plain Dealer Publishing Co. and Northeast Ohio Media Group. All rights reserved (About Us).The material on this site may not be reproduced, distributed, transmitted, cached or otherwise used, except with the prior written permission of Northeast Ohio Media Group LLC.